MISSOURI
New York Post
May 30, 2018
By Joshua Rhett Miller
A former inmate in Missouri was repeatedly raped by a prison guard before reporting the attacks to a mental health counselor — who also sexually assaulted her, according to a federal lawsuit.
Karen Backues Keil was released from the Chillicothe Correctional Center in February 2017 after a six-year prison stint for forgery and theft, but she still battles the stress and sorrow associated with “the hell” of being raped more than 20 times by prison guard Edward Bearden, her lawsuit alleges.
“I can’t get over it,” Keil told the Kansas City Star. “It’s there every second of the day. I have to think about it and I have to fight those thoughts in my head that I deserved this. And I didn’t. Nobody deserves what I went through.”
Keil’s lawsuit, which was filed earlier this week, claims Bearden — who still works at the 1,640-inmate, mixed-custody women’s facility — began touching her inappropriately during pat-downs by groping her breasts and backside. That later escalated to repeated rapes between 2012 and 2015, according to her lawsuit.
Keil then sought help from a prison counselor following the alleged sexual assaults, but less than a month after she started therapy sessions with counselor John Thomas Dunn, he too began sexually assaulting her, the lawsuit claims.
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